Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
Love can stay just an idea until someone acts. John points to an event in history that answers three questions: whom God sent, where, and why life comes first as the proof of love.
(Older translations read "only begotten Son" where the ESV has "his only Son." The writers quoted below use the older wording.)
Just before this, John writes about being born of God and knowing God. That can tempt a reader to look inside himself for proof of love. One writer shows where the verse sends us instead.
John speaks of the one who loves as born of God and knowing God. That might have thrown the soul right back on itself, to search for love there and fall into mysticism. But the Spirit of God clearly lays down this sharing in the divine nature. At once He turns the eye of faith to what is wholly outside us. So we may have the proof of divine love and learn its character... I was dead then — I live through another. It was pure and perfect love in the mind of God Himself. It expressed what He is in this love, for there was nothing in me to attract it or awaken it.
The phrase "only begotten" is not decoration. It tells us who the Person sent is.
There was no life here, and no one else could give it. It was not enough to point to the Son in heaven; that would not satisfy God. No, God sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him; and this is the way souls do live. He sets this One before us, and tells us who the Son of God is. He is Jesus — truly the Son of Man, but also the Son of God. He is the only-begotten Son of the Father, yet God just as much as His Father.
"Into the world" fixes the place. It was here, among fallen people, that God chose to make Himself known.
Men may guess about other worlds. But no one has any real ground to say that God has ever revealed Himself except here... It is here that He sent His Son; it is here that He sent Him to be a man — a witness of His grace towards man beyond all words! — and remember, when man was fallen. Not until then was there the smallest word of it from God; but man had no sooner fallen than He speaks.
The purpose named here assumes something. If the aim was life, then the state before was death — and a dead person cannot respond.
Without the new life it would have been impossible for us to respond to God's love. The sweetest music, the finest beauty, the most delicate perfume — none of it stirs desire or wakes pleasure in a corpse. And by nature we are spiritually dead towards God, unaware of Him. But with God's gift of life we have gained a capacity for enjoying Him, and our hearts can now enter into His love.
"Live" in this verse is not survival. It describes a quality of life that had no source in man.
When God did send His Son into the world, it was to deal with sin and with Satan. It was to bring in what man could find nowhere else — LIFE, eternal life! Life that could feel according to God! Life that could take pleasure in His presence, and delight in His will. Life able to know and enjoy God! And where was this found? Is it in man's heart? In religious ceremonies? Nowhere but in the Son of God!
Earlier names of God did not carry this gift. One writer draws the contrast.
The name "Almighty" does not carry eternal life. "Jehovah" fulfils promises, but does not give eternal life. But the Father sent the Son, "so that we might live through him."
Life alone leaves something unsettled. The next verse adds propitiation — the Son sent to deal with our sins.
For we were dead towards God, and in Him alone was the life that could serve God, which we entirely lacked... But even this possession of life in Him does not satisfy His love, any more than it fits us to enjoy, serve, and worship Him. There is a burden which nothing on our part could remove. So it follows: this is love — not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.
- Manifested — hidden love proves nothing. John points to an event outside us, not to feelings inside us.
- Only begotten — the measure of the love is the worth of the One sent: the Son of the Father, God as much as His Father.
- Into the world — God sent Him here, to fallen people. He has revealed Himself nowhere else as He has here.
- That we might live — the gift assumes we were dead; a corpse feels nothing, so life had to come before response.
- Through Him — this life is nowhere but in the Son. Verse 10 then adds propitiation, because life alone leaves the burden of sin in place.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins.
God is love — but where is that proved? This verse turns away from what we feel toward God and points to what God did about our sins.
So where should a person look for proof?
God is love. That is a firm statement. If people look for proof of it in the sinful and disordered world around them, they will fail to find it. We must look in the right direction. There has been a perfect display of God's love, but only in one direction, as verses 9 and 10 so plainly state.
The verse rules out one starting point before it names the real one. Nothing in us set this love in motion.
Love has come in to deal with our sins as well as with our state... The gift God gave measures His love in all its infinite greatness. So do the depths of sorrow and judgment His dear Son entered to do this great work of propitiation — depths beyond our understanding... No feeling of love toward God on our side prompted the love that sent His Son. In our natural state as guilty sinners we did not love Him. It all began in God's own heart. The work was finished on the cross long before we ever thought of Him. That work enabled God to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The phrase does not mean we were free from any duty to love Him. It means we failed at it.
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Indeed He loved us beyond compare, and doubly. We were dead in sins; and God's love was shown in sending His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him. We were guilty sinners; and He sent His Son as the only and effective sacrifice for our sins.
Does the word mean God had to be won over? One writer answers plainly.
The Bible does not teach that God is set against us. He is not a frowning God who has to be kept calm by sacrifices that change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt pagan idea... Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a sacrifice, His heart, which is toward man, is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.
Verse 9 speaks of life; verse 10 speaks of propitiation. Our ruin had two sides, and God's love meets both.
But we were guilty also, as responsible beings before Him. Here His love has met us. He has given His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It is not law, nor duty, though duty was there... Love is not that we love God. That is what we must look for in our hearts if we seek the proof of life there — but then we are under law, and the law required just that, and required it justly. Love is that God loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. It is not requiring from us what we ought to be, but putting away, making a holy propitiation for our sins. We are dead in sins, and He gives us life. We were guilty, and He has given Him to make propitiation for our sins. He has met our whole case, in both its aspects as sinners.
The wording here is exact, and it reaches all the way to the conscience.
John does not speak of the Son here as making propitiation, but as being a propitiation. God sends Him as the One who, in His own Person, is able to do this great work that no one else could do. All the power of propitiation stays in Him, and it is available for all. We could never have received or enjoyed divine life if our sins had not been put away. The conscience must be free from all sense of guilt and defilement first. Only then can we enjoy the relationships and affections with God that He, in His great love, has given us.
A person may have life and still carry the weight of past sin. This verse speaks to that distress.
In the gospel God removes this distress. He purges the believer's conscience and fills him with peace through faith in Christ's sacrifice. That is why 1 John 4:10 adds, "In this is love, not that we have loved God" (which we surely do now, living in Christ), "but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This alone is fully effective. The Spirit seals us on the strength of it, and grace brings us into liberty and spiritual power.
- Direction. The state of the world does not prove God's love. One event does: God sent His Son.
- Origin. Nothing in us started it. There was not a single feeling of love toward God prompting the gift; it all began in God's own heart.
- Correction. Propitiation never means an angry God bought off. Our sins made it necessary; God Himself supplied it.
- Completeness. We were dead in sins, and He gives life; guilty, and He gives propitiation. He meets our whole case.
- Effect. Because the Son Himself is the propitiation, God purges the conscience and brings the believer into liberty.
Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
God's love reached its highest point in the gift of His only Son. John now turns from what God has done to what we owe each other. One small word, "so," joins the two. How can people answer a love they can never repay?
The appeal rests on a measure, not on a general idea of God's kindness. One writer presses on that small word:
"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Can we emphasize that little word "so" enough? Such unselfish concern led to such an amazing sacrifice. It should capture the heart and enlarge it, so that we serve the need of others in complete self-denial.
The command comes with a reason, and the reason lies outside us:
The Apostle does not say, "Now that you have the divine nature you should love one another." No — he tells us to look away from ourselves to the wonderful expression of God's love. That love thought about us in all our ruin and need, in death and guilt. It made the fullest provision for our eternal blessing. It cost God His only Son… We must not claim that there is no motive to love.
Commentators also notice what the verse does not say. The word "ought" points to one another, never to God:
First, let me remind you of a distinction. Scripture never says that we ought to love God, but it does say that we ought to love one another. The law said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart," and so on. Christianity lays no such duty on us. It is only our brothers and sisters whom we "ought" to love. The reason is obvious. We love God because He first loved us… We love Him because we cannot help ourselves.
The word "ought" carries the sense of something owed — one debt a Christian never finishes paying:
We ought to love one another; it is a debt that we should constantly be paying. If God has so loved us, we owe to one another to love, as being born of God. We will never pay this debt off. But we owe it to one another to love — even though we should take on no other kind of debt.
Other writers are careful that "duty" is not the last word:
When the apostle says, "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another," we must not take him to mean that loving one another is a mere duty. A duty it certainly is. But that is not the spirit of the love he calls us to. He urges us to a love shaped after the love we see in God. "We also ought to love one another" means, then, using the divine life we have received — practising it towards one another. However far we fail in this, we fail that far to show the divine bond in the family of God.
Love that stays hidden inside helps no one. It has to show:
The nature of the obligation is simple. We should act towards one another as God has acted towards us… So the obligation reaches, if the occasion arises, to the manner and the measure of the love of Christ!… Only do not forget that the apostle speaks of love shown towards one another. You can see this from the case he names: a brother in need… It is good if you love me in your heart. But I will never benefit from it if you never let me see it shown.
One writer ties this call back to John 1:18, where Christ shows God to us:
It is a wonderful word, clearly connected… with what John 1:18 says. There Christ stands as the display of God in love. Here God calls the saints to be no less. Dear friends, how far do we display our God and Father by this divine love? It never seeks its own. Whatever the cost, it is set on the good of those it loves — His children, yes, all, even enemies.
- Source. The command starts outside us: we look away from ourselves to the love that cost God His only Son, not to our own new nature.
- Measure. The small word "so" fixes the standard: the obligation reaches to the manner and the measure of Christ's love.
- Direction. Scripture never says we ought to love God. We love Him because He first loved us. The "ought" turns towards one another.
- Debt. Love here is the one account never closed. It is owed constantly, yet it is more than duty; it is the divine life practised towards each other.
- Display. Love kept in the heart benefits no one. Shown in action, it displays God the Father in His children.
No one has seen God at any time if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
The verse repeats the opening words of John 1:18 — no one has ever seen God — but it answers the problem in a new way. The Son who declared the Father is now in heaven, so where can the world see God today?
John's Gospel meets the same problem with a different answer. Darby sets the two verses side by side, using an older wording of John 1:18.
"No one has ever seen God." How can I know and love a being I have never seen? "The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." In the Gospel, which is meant to bring Christ before us, I find the sense to be this. You have not seen God, and yet you have. He who was the very delight of the Father — who is in the bosom of the Father, the closest object of the Father's delight — has declared Him. So I do know Him. This is the answer to the difficulty that no one ever saw God. Christ has made Him known to me. Here, in the letter, it is, "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us." What is revealed in Christ comes straight into our own hearts, because the Holy Spirit is in us.
Christ showed God in full while He was here. So what happens now that He has gone?
But now the Lord is gone. He who declared God is in heaven. Is there no present living witness of God? … His love was in all perfection in Christ; He stood in contrast with all human imperfections. Where is the resource? "If we love one another." Is it not very solemn that God points to Christians to let this dark world see what God is? God calls us to be His witnesses to a world that doubts anything can be known about Him. He does it above all by the working of divine love in our souls and in our ways.
The same writer names what such love in us rests on:
1 John 4:12 could not have been without John 1:18, and more too — Christ's death for us and the gift of the Spirit to us. Christ must be our life before such love can appear in us.
The phrase is not a figure of speech for good feelings. Writers take it as God Himself present, known from the inside.
What is the answer in our epistle to this same difficulty? "If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us." By the communication of the divine nature, and by the dwelling of God in us, we inwardly enjoy Him as He has been manifested and declared by His only Son. His love is perfect in us, known to the heart, as it has been declared in Jesus. The God who has been declared by Him dwells in us.
Because that nature is active by definition, the love shows itself:
The moral nature of God is in us. This, as we have already seen, is an active nature. If it is present at all in a man, it is present in activity. Since it is the moral nature of God, it is proper to say God is dwelling in us. God dwells in us by a nature and life from Himself. It is His love that is in us. In loving one another, that love is having its normal activity in us. This is what is meant by the expression, "And His love is perfected in us."
The word points to love reaching its full growth, not to a score for our effort.
This is the proof that God abides in us. And His love is perfected in us in this way: it is producing its matured fruit. He is not speaking of how much we love one another, but of the fact. But a fact will always manifest itself. How much we love will depend on how much we enjoy God's love, but the apostle is not speaking of that here.
"Perfected" does not mean we become flawless:
Of course it does not mean the strange error of the man's own perfection. The flesh is never rooted out while we live, but God dealt with it in Christ's cross… So His love is perfected in the one who keeps His word, and it is perfected as we love one another. We submit to His word, and we walk together in love despite all difficulties. That is how God's love is perfected in us: it is carried out according to the mind of God.
Because God is unseen, anyone can claim to love Him. The verse points to a test you can see:
A careless, self-centred man does not see God, so he will assume he loves God even though his claimed love never takes any practical shape. But the test of this is in whether or not he loves the children of God.
Once God dwells there, the source of that love changes:
There is no stint in God's love, but marvellous meagreness in man's love. But when God dwells in us, the human heart, selfish by nature, becomes a fountain of kindness to others — kindness of a divine character.
- Unseen — The same difficulty opens John 1:18 and this verse: no one has seen God. Both passages answer it, one by the Son declaring Him, one by God dwelling in His children.
- Indwelt — The answer now is not a sight but a home. God dwells in us by a nature and life from Himself.
- Active — That nature never lies idle. If it is present at all, it is present in activity, and its normal activity is loving one another.
- Perfected — Love reaching its matured fruit, carried out according to the mind of God. It never means we are flawless; the flesh is never rooted out while we live.
- Visible — What the world cannot see in God it is meant to see in Christians. God points to believers to let a doubting world behold what He is.
Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, that he has given to us of his Spirit.
No one has ever seen God, so how can anyone be sure of a living link with Him? John points to something a believer can know: the gift of the Spirit.
John said something close to this at the end of chapter 3.
In 1 John 4:13 we find an expression found nowhere else in the New Testament: "He has given us of His own Spirit." That expression is powerful enough to show us how we become "partakers of the divine nature," 2 Peter 1:4. The apostle had already said, "And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us," 1 John 3:24. The various effects of His power made the Spirit's presence felt, and proved that God lived in Christians. But this passage of 1 John 4:13 goes much further. It is evident not only that God dwells in us, but that we dwell in Him, because He has given us of His Spirit.
The small word "of" is doing real work. It moves the subject from proof of God's presence in us to our own conscious enjoyment of being in Him.
He has given us, not here "His Spirit" — the proof that He dwells in us — but "of His Spirit." By His presence in us we share in divine affection through the Spirit. So we know more than that He dwells in us. The presence of the Spirit, acting in a nature which is that of God in us, makes us conscious that we dwell in Him. For He is the infinite fullness and perfection of what is now in us.
The same phrase also sets this blessing apart from the Spirit's work in other people.
It is not merely "the Spirit." God worked by the Spirit in many a person where no one could say it was "of His Spirit." We often hear of the Spirit working in the Old Testament, and still more in the New. We find partakers of the Holy Spirit and powers of the world to come spoken of in Hebrews 6:4-5, where they fell away fatally from God. Scripture never says these were born of the Spirit, still less that God gave them "of His Spirit." This implies real communion with God.
What God gives is someone, not something.
John passes on to speak of the love of God that has been "perfected in us." That love is bound up with the great truth of the Spirit given to us. This is more than having a new nature, for the Spirit is a divine Person. "No one has ever seen God"; but we know that "the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known." The Holy Spirit makes the Son's declaration of God real to our souls. He bears witness to Christ, brings to our remembrance what Christ has said, and takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us (John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:14). The very perfection of love, the greatest privilege that love can confer, is that "we abide in Him and He in us."
In this letter "abiding in Him" points sometimes to Christ and sometimes to God.
For instance, in 1 John 2:6, 1 John 2:28, 1 John 3:6, the reference seems clearly to be to Christ. In 1 John 3:24, 1 John 4:13, 15, 16, it is to God. … The whole treatment of this matter here is meant to teach us how truly the Son is one with the Father. We cannot be in the Son without being in the Father, and we can only be in the Father by being in the Son.
God's abiding in us rests on His gift. Our abiding in Him is daily dependence, and it can break off.
But abiding in God is a matter of practical, spiritual dependence on Him. It could not happen unless the Spirit who abides in the believer kept the believer looking to God without grieving Him, and drawing from Him. If I were grieving the Lord at the time, I am no longer abiding in Him. I have slipped out of His presence, and for a while I may be following my own thought and way and will.
The same writer warns against testing this verse by our feelings.
There are many devout people who confuse a certain happiness in their souls with God's abiding in them. This danger usually takes a mystical form. They look inward at themselves and live by their feelings. … It is an effort to love God, and a readiness to credit the effort; not the faith of God's redeeming love and His unsparing judgment of the flesh, which finds an infinitely better portion in Christ the Lord.
- Gift. God has given us of His Spirit — an expression found nowhere else in the New Testament.
- Proof. The earlier verse used that gift to show God abides in us; here it shows more, that we also abide in Him.
- Communion. "Of His Spirit" means real communion with God, not just power at work — something Scripture never says of those who fell away.
- Person. God gives a divine Person, who makes the Son's declaration of God real to us and shows us the things of Christ.
- Practice. God's abiding rests on His gift. Ours is dependence lived out. We test it by faith in Christ, not by measuring good feelings.
And *we* have seen, and testify, that the Father has sent the Son [as] Saviour of the world.
In verse 13 John speaks of the gift of the Spirit, and in verse 15 of confessing Jesus as the Son of God; between them he sets a plain fact — eyewitnesses tell what they saw. The verse raises three questions: who these witnesses are, what the Father's sending of the Son means, and how far "the world" reaches.
The force of the verse sits on the verb. John does not tell his readers to look inward at their own love. He points them back to a Person that human eyes watched.
Notice how carefully inspiration has guarded against the mystical school in the next verse. The blessed truth of Christ — the facts the Gospels reveal — is the best cure for this habit of looking inside ourselves. It sets and establishes the heart on its divine foundation... "And we have beheld" — there is the emphatic word of the inspired witnesses — "and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world."
Commentators differ here. Some hold that the seeing belongs strictly to those who walked with Him:
Here we listen to apostolic speech. "We" means the apostles, not us, the believers. We haven't seen Him with our eyes. But the apostles could say, "We have seen, and testify."
Others link the verse to what comes just before it: the Spirit given to every believer. From that they draw a practical conclusion:
Because the Spirit lives in us, our testimony goes out to the world. "We" must not be limited to the gifted only... It is a great wrong to the unsaved to make evangelizing the work of a few. No official position and no gift is essential for this — the Holy Spirit is. There are gifts, but all who are saved, and so know the Saviour, are each to bear testimony in his or her own sphere.
Sending needs two: one who sends, and one who is sent. Older translations read "the Son" here, not the ESV's "his Son," and the point below turns on that wording.
In the same way, the act of sending involves two Persons — the Sender and the Sent: "the Father sent the Son to be Saviour of the world." "The Son" was what He was before the sending. The "Saviour of the world" was what He was to become when sent.
Another writer reads the two halves of the sentence as a guard on both sides of who Christ is:
All the great controversies in the Christian Church, from the days of the early church fathers down to today, have centred on this very point. It has always been Satan's ceaseless attack. Reduce our Lord to mere manhood, refuse His Deity, and the whole of Scripture becomes a fraud. Refuse His true Manhood, pure and sinless, and you have lost the Saviour. "The Father sent the Son [Deity] to be the Saviour [Manhood] of the world."
The title breaks through every boundary a religious mind might want to draw. It also turns this testimony into a test of whether a person has understood Christianity.
"We have seen" — what a sight! Greater than Moses ever saw! Until He, the Lord Jesus, came, no one knew that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Now it is the testimony of every Christian. The believer who does not testify this does not understand Christianity... here it is Christian testimony: "the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour," not of Israel only, but "of the world." However bad, however far off, however dark a sinner may be, He is the Saviour.
Outsiders had already used this title. In John's Gospel it comes from Samaritans, a people the Jews looked down on:
It was not only a Saviour, and not only for the people of Israel who were expecting the Messiah, but "the Saviour of the world." Even then the truth broke through the clouds. The light shone into the hearts of the despised and ignorant Samaritans, and they were the first to confess Him in this way.
The title says what He actually does for people — and what it cost Him:
Saviour means someone who brings salvation. He takes people out of their state of ruin and brings them into salvation, into nearness to God, into His communion. But for this He had to die. The Son of God had to die on the cross of Calvary.
- Sent — the Father is the Sender and the Son the Sent; He was the Son before He was sent, and became Saviour in being sent.
- Seen — the verse rests on eyewitness fact, not on inner feeling. The facts of Christ cure endless self-examination.
- Saviour — the word means being taken out of ruin and brought into nearness to God, and it cost Him death on the cross.
- World — not Israel only; no sinner is too bad, too distant or too dark for this title, and Samaritans were the first to own it.
- Said — what was seen must be told out. Commentators differ over who "we" covers: the apostles alone, or every believer who has the Spirit of verse 13.